Editorial: ICT for education and development in Southern Africa

Stewart Marshall
The University of the West Indies, Barbados, West Indies

Wal Taylor
Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa

Welcome to this very special second issue of the International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT).

IJEDICT is an e-journal that seeks to support the community of researchers and practitioners involved in ICT for education and development, especially in those developing contexts in which people are at risk of "being left behind and being further marginalised" ("Declaration of Principles", WSIS-03/Geneva/Doc/4-E, Principle 10). IJEDICT seeks to provide this support in a variety of ways, including by:

• Providing free and open access to the knowledge contained between its "covers";

• Encouraging collaboration and the sharing of knowledge between researchers, practitioners, and all concerned with ICT for education and development; and in particular,

• Encouraging South-South collaboration and knowledge sharing.

This special issue of IJEDICT, which concerns the application of ICT in education in Southern Africa, is a clear example of how the latter, viz., South-South collaboration and knowledge sharing, can provide the means for local knowledge to become part of a global discourse.

This special issue has been compiled by Guest Editors Tony Carr and Laura Czerniewicz of the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The articles in this issue are based on papers presented at an African regional online conference, e/merge 2004. Tony and Laura saw the importance of making this rich material available to a wider audience concerned with ICT in education and development, and so undertook the onerous task of working with the authors to reshape the papers so as to be suitable for online publication in IJEDICT.

Thank you Tony and Laura for an excellent job well done, and for making this important knowledge available to the IJEDICT readers.

Stewart Marshall and Wal Taylor

Chief Editors, IJEDICT